After its plan to purchase Hitachi Global Storage Technologies spooked worldwide antitrust regulators, Western Digital announced today that it had agreed to sell Toshiba some of its 3.5 inch HDD manufacturing assets and related Intellectual Property.

As part of this deal Toshiba will transfer its damaged HDD manufacturing plant in Thailand to Western Digital, which will be merged into Western Digital’s Thailand operations.

A spokesperson from Toshiba indicated to the media that the acquisition of the HDD production equipment that is currently owned by Hitachi G.S.T from WD will allow it to produce a complete line of HDD products for PCs, consumer applications, and near-line storage.

Western Digital originally agreed to purchase Hitachi’s HDD operations in March 2011, but worldwide antitrust regulators nixed the deal. Now that the WD-Toshiba deal is complete WD’s acquisition of Hitachi is expected to go through.

Once Western Digital completes the acquisition of Hitachi there will be only three HDD manufacturers in the market: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba.